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Whatever magic fix he gave Rick, would certainly have been more magical in 250 or 260 innings, and for more years.

Maybe. Both his walk rate and k rate went down when Martin took over. My pet theory is Billy told him to throw the ball over the plate and let Murphy, Henderson and Armas chase down the ball or he'd kick his ass.

I have a magazine from 1980 somewhere with an article on Langford. If I remember correctly he says he never went over about 125 pitches while completing all those games. Per 9 innings, he only walked 2.0 batters while striking out 3.2. Now that's pitching to contact.

Interesting, I had just had Langford as a trivia answer in a recent Dugout: longest CG streaks by decade; IIRC it was Langford, Tanana, Marichal, Roberts, Lyons, and Lucas for the 1980s back through the 1930s. And I also seem to remember that Langford's streak was longer than Tanana's or Marichal's, just a complete throwback to deadball days.

I have a magazine from 1980 somewhere with an article on Langford. If I remember correctly he says he never went over about 125 pitches while completing all those games. Per 9 innings, he only walked 2.0 batters while striking out 3.2. Now that's pitching to contact.

It would be a fascinating exercise to have a great pitcher (in some meaningless late season starts) intentionally pitch to contact. Don't even try to strike anyone out or set them up for the strikeout, just try and get weak contact.

Martin didn't ride the Yankees' starters he managed especially hard. Of course, there he had a great bullpen, an asset he most distinctly didn't enjoy in Oakland.

But he sure loved his aces. He had Mickey Lolich make 45 starts, 29 CGs, and 376 IP with the Tigers in 1971, numbers barely approached since the Deadball era. He worked Fergie Jenkins in a career-high 328 innings with the Rangers in 1974, and if you push Fergie Jenkins to his career high in innings, you're doing some pushing.

what does that mean? Oak was second in CGs and Milw was first w/ 48? THen what does 42 mean in the third line? I thought you were showing leaguewide CGs..?? What does 60 out of 109 mean? They had 60 out of 109 CGs in the league/ Then how the hell does Det and Cle had 33 each?

Well, the formatting on the "second" thing was off, threw me at first too. Must be all that coke Bob snorted back in the day. (What?) Anyhoo, he's trying to show the size of the gap between the A's and 2nd place.